There was soup, and biscuits, and chittlins, baked potatoes and fresh peas. Corn on the cob, cranberry sauce, two kinds of preserves, and hot, black coffee. Then Miz Fenkel brought out half a dozen good old-fashioned Dutch Apple pies and we cleaned ’em up in short time.
Once, she was saying something to her husband in German, as she served us, and I saw Fair tighten up again. He made like to rise a little, and I put my hand on his shoulder, hard, and he seemed to snap out of a dream. He sat back down again real slow, and shook his head a couple times. He ran his hand through his hair, down across his face, and gave me a sort of sick white smile.
Right about then I figured I’d stick with the kid some. He needed a friend real bad. He needed someone to keep an eye out for him.
There was usually a horseshoe game going after supper, for a half-hour or so, and most of the men were over watching. I didn’t bother joining them. I wandered over to where the kid was leaning up against the steel frame of a plow. I was drawn to him, somehow.
“They put up a good spread here, don’t they?” I said, coming up behind him.
He spun around, half-dropping, his hands tightening, and glared at me. Those sharp green eyes were slitted up like a catamount’s, and his tongue kept flicking in and out, in and out.
For a minute there I was petrified. I’d never seen a kid that looked so old. He could have been a thousand years old in that minute. With the hate of a thousand years all ready to brim over. Then he saw it was me, and all that stoking died down. I could see the scare and fury simmer out from behind his eyes and he wiped his hand across them, as though they were burning. “Yeah. Yeah, they put up a real fine spread.” He sounded bone-weary.
I sat down right by his feet, with my back against the plow. He gave me a funny look. The kind of look a man who is alone always gives someone breaking into his loneliness. But I tried again. “Why do you want to kill your old man?”
He looked me that slow, careful look, and then pursed his lips. He was weighing it again, I could see.
“I’m just curious, that’s all,” I said. “If you’ve got reasons, why then don’t tell me. I was just curious, that’s all.”
He slid down, then, and went plonk in the dirt right next to me.
I thought he was going to silence, but he started in talking and pretty soon I’d of had to stop him with a gag in the mouth to shut him up.
“My father went overseas near the end of the Second World War,” he said, “and he met afraulein .” Way he said that kraut word I thought it was all the nasty stuff in the world, all in one word. He sounded real strange when he talked about it, like someone older than fifteen, sixteen.
“Yeah,” I urged.
“He married up with her, over there, and then brought her back here. Then he married her again, over here, just to make sure it was legal. Only trouble was,” and his face drew tight, “he was a bigamist. He was still married to Maw.” His face was white and stretched, as though someone had it out on dryers in the sun. It was real harsh and tight, with the lines under his eyes and around his mouth like ink.
I wondered how a young kid could look so old.
I wondered what he’d been through to know words like bigamist. He told the story quick, and it seemed he knew what he was going to say even before he said it. I wondered how often he’d told this story.
“My mother slashed her wrists once, and stuck her head in the oven a second time.” He winced when he said it, like it hurt in his stomach. “But she couldn’t die, cause she loved that man too much. He came home one night and made a big scene that broke her heart for real, then he ran off somewhere, and was gone with that fraulein of his.”
Then I understood why he’d tried to jump Miz Fenkel. The kid just hated German women. He was in a bad way. He could get real sick if he was to let a thing like that rule his whole life. I wanted to help him, but I didn’t know how.
He’d stopped talking, and had begun playing with the dirt between his outstretched legs. It was difficult to keep thinking of him as a young kid. He didn’t say any more, and I knew that was the story.
“How long you been looking?” I asked.
“Four years,” he said; real quiet.
“Ever found track of him?”
“Little bit. Words here and there. I always follow up what anyone says. If they tell me an American’s living with a German wife, I always go there. That’s why I came down here, but Old Man Fenkel ain’t American, he’s German.” He seemed disappointed, somehow. “I’ll find him,” he finished.
He stopped cold. I knew that was all. I wasn’t going to get any more, and it was a polite way of sayin’, don’t ask for no more.
I didn’t want no more.
All the next week we stayed pretty close together. The kid took a like to me, cause I didn’t bug him, and he knew I understood his troubles. And I was glad to be around him — it gave me something to do, watching out for him.
But the berry crop played out in a week, and Fenkel paid us all off, and thanked us mightily. He’d made connections and had a pretty penny setting up waiting for him for the batch.
Day he paid us off, I didn’t see Fair much. He got his stuff — just a few things — together in a beat-up old carpetbag and moved out of the bunkhouse. After Fenkel gave me my wages, I started to move out, slow, looking for the kid. I was just toting my blanket roll and some spare clothes. I moved out of the farm and down the road, looking both ways for the boy.
Then I saw him. He was up the road a few yards, walking slow, kicking the clods of dirt like he always did. I yelled to him.
“Where ya headin’, Fair?”
He looked over his shoulder, and I was glad he didn’t give me that catamount stare. He’d gotten real used to me during the last week, and we’d bunked down next to each other every night, so I kind of figured maybe I’d tag along with him, show him where the next crop was gonna be.
He answered, “Don’t know, Harry. I was thinking of going down to Lake Charles. Some of the boys said there was a peanut crop coming out around there somewhere.” Then he wetted his lips like he did once in a while, and said, slow, like he had trouble getting it out, “I was talking to one of the hands. He — he said he thought there might be someone down there I’d want to see.” He didn’t look at me when he said it, kept staring at his dusty army boots.
There was a light in his eyes.
“Your old man?”
He nodded.
“How do you know it is?”
“I don’t.”
“Then why — ” I began.
He cut me off. “I’ve got to find out. It might be. It just might.” His voice fell to a whisper. “I’ve got to see.”
“Mind if I tag along?”
He stared for a minute; he must have been wondering why a full-grown one like me wanted along with a kid like him. But he ducked his head a little bit, so that his hair tumbled again, and told me I could come if I was of a mind.
I had a mind, so we walked into Natchitoches together.
We caught a few hours sleep in the bus station, and later that night we hopped a freight, which is real tough to do these days, and started for Lake Charles.
We lay in the boxcar, staring out through the slats of the construction, watching the fuzz of trees whipping past.
I didn’t know for sure yet why I was going with this kid, but he was something I was interested in, and it’d been a long time since I’d been interested in anything.
It’s lonely out on the road — and that’s the way most guys like it. That way nobody makes demands on you. But this kid was company, and interesting, and he had worries, and he didn’t ask for nothing. You could be with him and not worry about him making any demands.
And he needed a friend real bad. It’s good for a man to be a friend, once in a while.